Date: Thu, 23 Jan 97 17:15:12 EST From: ngltf@ngltf.org Subject: OP-ED: D'Emilio ********************************************************************* National Gay and Lesbian Task Force OPINION-EDITORIAL Contact: John D'Emilio 202/332-6483 x3302 jdemilio@ngltf.org 2320 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009 http://www.ngltf.org ********************************************************************* The following is an opinion/commentary written by Dr. John D'Emilio, the director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute. This month's commentary is a tribute to the life of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, whose work did much to change scientific understanding of homosexuality. Dr. D'Emilio is a noted historian and author. His works include "Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics and the University" (Routledge, 1992), "Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970" (University of Chicago Press, 1983), and he is the co-author of "Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America" (Harper and Row, 1988). He is currently working on a biography of the late Bayard Rustin. D'Emilio's monthly column is available the last week of each month. Please publish or distribute this piece. Photos of Dr. D'Emilio are available by contacting Tracey Conaty at 202/332-6483 x3303. ...................................................................... Unsung Hero By John D'Emilio Director, NGLTF Policy Insitute Evelyn Hooker died in November at the ripe old age of 89. I'm willing to lay odds that not many of us know who she is or what she did. Yet she deserves the status of hero in our community as a pioneering psychologist whose research has changed our world. Her career is also a fascinating case study of the potentially productive relationship between "the expert" and a social movement. Hooker earned a Ph.D. in psychology in the early 1930s--not an easy achievement for an American woman of that era--and was teaching at UCLA when a former student who had become a friend challenged her to study him and his other gay male friends. "Science" was pretty clear in its attitudes toward homosexuality in the mid-20th century. Physicians, psychoanalysts, and psychologists agreed that homosexuality was a mental disorder that needed treatment and cure. Since virtually all of the homosexuals whom professionals studied were either institutionalized or seeking medical help, it wasn't hard to prove that we were sick and disturbed. With the help of the recently formed Mattachine Society in southern California, Hooker became the first professional to assemble a group of non-patient gay men, and match them with a group of heterosexuals with similar demographic characteristics. She then administered a series of standard psychological tests to each group and asked a panel of professionals, who were kept in the dark about the identity of the subjects, to evaluate the test results. Much to their surprise, and to Hooker's delight, they were unable to tell the homosexuals from the heterosexuals, and rated the gay subjects high in personality development and emotional adjustment. Two decades later, when I interviewed Hooker for a book I was writing on the homophile movement of the 1950s, she chuckled mischievously as she remembered how baffled the other professionals were by the outcome. Hooker's work shattered conventional wisdom. Throughout the 1950s, Hooker kept giving papers at professional conventions and publishing scholarly articles about her research. In the 1960s, she began expanding her work to study gay men not just as individuals but as members of a community--a novel way of looking at us. Slowly, networks of dissenting medical and mental health professionals began to form, and Hooker's work was the catalyst that made it happen. She also kept up her ties with the homophile movement, and provided support and encouragement for their efforts to make change. In 1967, Hooker was approached by the National Institute of Mental Health to chair a Task Force on Homosexuality. Gay activists were thrilled, since Hooker was clearly an ally and, in fact, the composition of the Task Force seemed stacked in our favor. When the Task Force released its report in 1969, the final document was without doubt the most enlightened statement on homosexuality ever to have emerged from our government. I have often wondered what difference it would have made if the liberal Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, had been elected president in 1968, instead of Richard Nixon. Would the government have started to act on the recommendations of its own Task Force? Meanwhile, Hooker's work had started the ball rolling toward an historic achievement: the decision by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Simultaneously, the open-minded approach of this pioneering psychologist also had its effects on her own professional organization, the American Psychological Association. Today, in the 1990s, the APA has probably done more than any other mainstream professional society to advocate for fair treatment of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people. APA has a staffer dedicated to gay concerns; it produces publications that can be used effectively in advocacy work; it files court briefs and testifies at legislative hearings; and it actively encourages and supports groundbreaking research on issues of sexuality and identity. We can't give Hooker credit for all these changes, of course. But it is possible to trace the historical lines of influence back to her pioneering scholarly work. Sometimes, as I work at the Task Force to develop its Policy Institute, I watch swirls of activity around me as staff respond to the latest hot spot in some corner of the country. Frankly, I wonder whether it makes sense to be putting resources into research and the production of knowledge when there are so many immediate crises at hand. And then I remember the work of Evelyn Hooker, and the difference it has made, and I know that we need to operate on many fronts at once, that knowledge, as someone famous once said, is a form of power. .............. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is a progressive organization that has supported grassroots organizing and pioneered in national advocacy since 1973. Since its inception, NGLTF has been at the forefront of virtually every major initiative for lesbian and gay rights. In all its efforts, NGLTF helps to strengthen the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movement at the state level while connecting these activities to a national vision for change. ### _________________________________________ This message was issued by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Media Department. If you have any questions regarding this post, please direct them to one of the contacts at the top of this message If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, please send an email with "UNSUBSCRIBE PRESSLIST" in the subject and body of your email message to .